


you are a ghost

by too_much_in_the_sun



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Angst, Disabled Character, Ethan is a sweet murder puppy cinnamon roll, Gen, Trans Character, Victor Is Sad, there that about covers it, this was supposed to be a oneshot i'm so mad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 05:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3924559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/too_much_in_the_sun/pseuds/too_much_in_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <em>And during a weekend spent with him, Ethan wakes up and sees Victor standing at the window and looking blankly out at the fog. He asks him if anything is wrong, and he replies. At first he persuades himself that his reply has been “I saw a ghost.”</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>A later truth forces him to admit Victor may have said “I am a ghost.”</em>
  </p>
  <p>
    <em>A final act of memory retrieval convinces him that he has said something far more telling: “You are a ghost.”</em>
    <br/>
  </p>
</blockquote><br/>Victor has a really bad crush on Ethan, there's angst, I'll rewrite this later. Takes place prior to season 2.
            </blockquote>





	you are a ghost

**Author's Note:**

> I finally dug up the quotation/s I was looking for, and apologies are warranted:  
> \- the summary is an edited version of Stephen King commenting on Peter Straub's _Ghost Story_  
>  \- chapter titles come from _Ghost Story_ as well  
>  \- chapter quotations begin appearing in chapter 2, and are edited from originals appearing in _Ghost Story_  
>  \- have I told you you should read _Ghost Story_ yet
> 
> Here are some assorted disclaimers:
> 
> \- Everything in this chapter is filtered through the lens of Victor Frankenstein, sad mad scientist. 
> 
> \- Brona is a cool character, she just doesn't show up here much because I suck at writing her. Same goes for Caliban. In fact, if someone's missing you can presume it's because I really suck at writing them.
> 
> \- Victor's experiences don't apply to everyone, and I mixed in quite a bit of Victorian-era ideas of sex/gender because I care a lot about "accuracy" in fic of a show with werewolves.
> 
> \- I played very fast-and-loose with Victor's backstory, because I will happily found a story on Lies if it makes a character more sad.
> 
> \- I am both disabled and trans. 
> 
> \- This was supposed to be a oneshot, I'm in shipper trash hell, _help me_

* * *

 

Victor is a student and admirer of the human body. He loves the blush-pink of healthy marrow, the brown sponge of a bone tumor, the white sheen of fascia over a muscle. He has dissected many corpses, and he remembers each one by touch -- the smoothness of this one's skin, the sticky fat of that one's abdomen, the weight of a brain in his hands. He has seen it in life and in death, in sickness and health, and he has come to know and love each variation, each deformity, in its structure -- every body he sees bewitches him further, draws him like a fine work of art.

Except his own.

It is only a vessel. There is no reason it should disgust him. For the most part it is quite serviceable; durable enough to withstand the strain he puts on it every day, delicate enough to peel the meninges from a brain.

But it _does_ disgust him -- something about it revolts him, and he avoids thinking of it as best he can.

_It is only a vessel,_ he reminds himself as he strips out of his undershirt and dons a new one, eyes shut. _There is no reason to be upset about what you cannot change._

He would change it if he could, and sometimes he suspects in his heart that this is what drives his restless search for the spark of life -- his wish to remake himself anew, to craft a better vessel for his soul.

Victor breathes in deeply, then exhales as far as he can; his bent hands draw the laces as tight as they will go, until he feels compression at the edge of pain across his ribcage. His back straightens, and he turns to face the mirror, assessing himself.

It does not reflect what he would like to see -- he sees a lanky, frail young man with long limbs and dark circles around his eyes, and that is well enough, but there are... _exceptions._ Some are almost invisible -- the leg that cannot quite bear his weight -- and some are too visible for him to bear.

He smoothes his hands over the corset, checking the flatness of his chest. His body is -- _defective_ \-- not crafted well for any role in this life -- the hips just below the bottom of his corset too wide, his waist too thick.

And of course there is the issue of his chest.

If there is anything about this body he is thankful for, it is that his -- his _breasts_ \-- are small, and easily concealed under his binding corset and layers of clothing. And the corset keeps him from being too aware of them, during the day, but too often he comes home dizzy from the lack of breath, certain he can feel the bones pressing into his flesh, and has to take it off for the rest of the day.

But it is still early morning, and it does not yet feel as if the corset is slowly choking him, and after a final glance in the mirror -- _is this enough, will they see_ \-- he turns away and resumes his dressing.

* * *

Snapshots of his life:

The doctors think his mother will die if she bears another child, and his father grudgingly declares his small daughter his heir. They will raise her, his father says, as they would raise a son, so that there will be someone to carry on the family name.

Ernest is unexpected, and Victor is old enough to be bewildered by the change around him. It's Ernest who is now expected to receive their father's title someday, and Victor finds himself an afterthought, plans for his education, his future, forgotten. His hair goes untrimmed.

He refuses skirts, demands the freedom of short pants -- "I am not a baby, and I won't wear a dress like one" he says to the nursemaid who has been trying to manuever him into a party frock -- and eventually the servants give in.

When he looks in the mirror he sees a stranger -- the trousers help, but he is firmly not permitted to cut his hair, and his shirts are women's shirts. He borrows one of Ernest's shirts from the wash, pulls his hair back, and looks at himself in the mirror for a long time, straining to see someone he recognizes.

Medical school is out of the question. He was permitted tutors (instead of going away to school like Ernest), but it is not enough, and there is only so much he can learn from his books, and there is only so long he can survive being called "daughter" and "miss" and "she".

On his sixteenth birthday he receives a portion of his inheritance, and it is hardly half a year before he is sneaking out of the house with all of it sewn in the lining of his coat, wearing trousers that hardly fit, starting at every sound.

He has left his long hair in locks, unevenly cut with his sewing scissors, on the floor of his bedroom. The rain plasters the rest to his forehead as he makes the long walk to the rail station, and he is so aware of his body as it moves in the world that it hurts.

The windows of the train reflect just enough to let him see what he looks like -- and in the soaked, miserable-looking young man who looks back at him, he sees himself for the first time.

* * *

As far as Victor is concerned, he did not really exist until five years ago. The child he remembers being was a phantasm, conjured to satisfy what his parents wanted of him -- a delicate little girl, soft and passionless.

_You are a phantom,_ he thinks sometimes, _you are a shadow casting a man, you are a lie_ , _you are nothing but a ghost,_ and he lies awake unsure if he is alive at all.

* * *

He becomes a student of human behavior almost by accident. Once he has done what he can with clothing, his face and hands are serviceable enough -- bony, harsh, but masculine enough to pass inspection. What remains is to model the way he _is_.

He coarsens his motions as best he can, makes them as blocky as possible -- he thinks of dockworkers and mechanics, tries to make the movements of his hands as confident as he can, as solid.

He teaches his hips not to move as he walks, centers the side-to-side motion in his shoulders, swaggers like a sailor. Sometimes his leg does not respond to his commands, and drags on the pavement. He forces it in line with the other.

He reminds himself to take more room on the omnibus and out on the town, to sprawl, to be comfortable rather than gathered-in.

He mimicks the men around him to the best of his ability, synthesizes their way of moving and copies it, prays that it will be enough, that it will disguise his shortcomings.

He shaves the peach-fuzz from his cheeks, and he does not, does not weep for what he cannot have.

* * *

The leg begins to pain him just as he arrives in London, and in his heart of hearts he half-believes it is a punishment for his sin -- that if he cast off this life and slunk back to the family estate in shame, it would lift from him.

Yet if this is the price to pay, he will pay it -- most of the time, he is content with this punishment. He will bear the twist of pain from hip to ankle, he will lie awake at night calculating the survival rate of amputation, he will drag himself through the streets with a leg that screams and burns beneath him -- he will walk through hell if it keeps him from that life he abandoned.

He examines it over and over, pressing at the muscles under the skin so sharply he leaves bruises, prodding with needles, until he is forced to accept that, so far as he can determine, it is only a leg, a grossly normal left leg, encircled in agony every moment of every day, slowly driving him mad.

He refuses to use a cane -- if they see him with a cane, they will think even less of him, and he has worked so hard to eke out the little acceptance he receives -- and he is glad that there is no one to see him stumbling through his laboratory, leaning heavily on machinery and support posts.

The morphine helps, and it is easy enough to obtain, but he hates what it does to his mind -- hates that it clouds him with false euphoria, hates that it makes him _happy_ when he has nothing to be happy about.

* * *

Caliban wants to kill him.

Victor agrees with the sentiment.

This time Caliban has him by the neck, and although his grip is relatively loose Victor can feel that each breath is harder to draw.

"Do it," he wheezes with the little air he has. "Just kill me. Stop -- toying with me. Let me die."

Caliban stares at him. "I could," he says, as if he does not have Victor pressed against the wall by his throat. "But you have promised me something, and I will not let you rest until it is mine."

"Do it yourself," Victor spits. "You're always telling me -- how intelligent you are. Just _kill me_ already."

His creature -- his monster -- regards him with a raptor's cool, predatory eyes.

"I asked you the same once -- do you remember?" he says, not leaving time for Victor's answer, closing his fingers tighter, his nails pricking the skin. Victor tries to draw breath, finds he cannot. "I asked you that _and you denied me._ No. I will not grant you that mercy, _father,_ because you denied it to me."

Caliban lets him slump to the floor as he leaves in a swirl of coat, and Victor thinks what he cannot say.

_I am afraid of you because you are too much like me._

* * *

He is afraid of only two things in this world.

He is afraid of Caliban, his eldest son, because of the ease with which he lives, despite his melancholy and brooding. Caliban _belongs_ in his body, as marred by scarring as it is, as awkward as he is. His body _fits_ him.

Victor would know. He designed it.

(" _You will be perfect," he whispered to the patchwork taking shape in front of him, "you will be beautiful and no one will question you" -- and when he sees it draw breath, when he sees its eyelids open, he runs before he is fully aware of what he is doing, because this thing he made with his own hands is the only thing, the only person, to know all his secrets, and he cannot bear the sight of something so like him and so not._ )

And he is afraid of Ethan Chandler, because he is in love with him.

He promised himself he would never love, as if it were something he could control. What lover, he rationalized, could ever accept him -- his odd fixations, his temper, his sharp tongue? Who could love his deformed body, could see past the surface to the private ghost of self-image Victor sees in his mirror?

It was easier, he thought, to deny himself companionship and love. To push people away before they could get too close, so that his rejection could not hurt them.

He was glad to learn that Ethan had a companion in Brona, because it justified his self-castigation -- _he would not return your love, he has a lover of his own,_ he told himself, and when he learned that she was sick he was morbidly glad, and hated himself for it.

She died peacefully, that was the most he could do for her. And as he sat, an incomplete thought tormented him -- _but I could bring her back_ \-- running in loops, chasing itself.

He lowered her body into the tub with care, thinking _after this Caliban will leave me alone_ and _will she remember Ethan, can I give her back her life_ until he was drowned in doubts.

When he had gotten her settled in he looked at her with curiosity. _Her_ body was not deformed. Brona had always lived utterly in herself, a soul intimately connected to its mortal vessel. She was not lost in between sexes as he was -- she had been every bit a woman, and even in death there was no ambiguity as to who and what she had been.

_Could I have been like you_ ? he wonders, looking at her now, her hair floating, drifting, like seaweed in a current. _Could I have had love_?

It doesn't matter, he decides -- if he had been born different it would change everything. Perhaps in another life he could have loved Ethan Chandler.

But in this life he does not deserve to. 

 


End file.
